Dicentra and others take on Slate’s Jacob Weisberg — whose distrust of markets not named Whole Foods marks him as the perfect Obama low information voter.
I don’t have much to add to what has already been written, except to note that Weisberg’s understanding of libertarianism seems to track directly with his understanding of most things. Which is to say, a mile wide and an inch deep — leading poor Jacob to believe that his barefoot tramping through intellectual puddles is akin to his being able to walk on water.
Jonah Goldberg, you know the guy, documents the libertarian reaction.
I’m over being depressed about the reality that simple facts can be simply dismissed by people that claim to have intellectual integrity. People that out-of-hand dismiss the role of the CRA and Fannie & Freddie in the subprime mess are willfully ignorant. Video of Democractic lawmakers defending the GSEs against Republican-sponsored regulation should cause cognitive dissonance that results in a scene from Scanners. But they can apparently blame this on the Repubs with a straight face.
And they’re getting away with it.
FTFY.
Wesiberg is also the perfect State-shtupper. If Wesiberg had been around in Egypt at the time of Moses, he probably would have been Dathan, always sucking up to Pharoah and scolding the Hebrews, “Nyahhh, where’s yer precious libertry nowwwww? Look where it got you, seeeee? At least here we’ve got a ruler who feeds us and gives us jobs. You get me, you mugs?”
leading poor Jacob to believe that his barefoot tramping through intellectual puddles is akin to his being able to walk on water
Ok, that’s my next cross-stitch project. Thanks Jeff!
The true irony is that while Ayn Rand didn’t much care for Libertarians, almost everyone that has studied philosophy agrees that Ayn Rand was an idiot.
I don’t much care for the totality of Rand’s philosophy, but she very much nailed the weaknesses in collectivism, i.e., that “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” means that most people will jump into the wagon, and eventually those who pull it will say screw it, and then how does the wagon go?
Furthermore, if you’re citing “almost everyone that has studied philosophy agrees” as an authoritative source on THIS blog, where a bunch of us HAVE, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.
The ability to philosophize and the ability to run a country (or an economy, or a small town, or a hot-dog stand) are two totally different skill sets. Frankly, I’d prefer that those who possess the latter be in charge of running things. They at least know what their limitations are, unlike those in the former category, who, like Jeff observes, thoroughly overestimate their utility and insight into how the world works.
Buckley wasn’t kidding when he said he’d rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.
He knew. Why don’t you?
I’m no Objectivist. But I do recognize the strengths of small-l libertarianism as it tracks with classical liberalism. There’s a reason the two are sometimes equated.
That being said, I don’t call myself a libertarian for reasons that the Libertarian party routinely exhibit.
[…] his barefoot tramping through intellectual puddles is akin to his being able to walk on water.  Jeff Goldstein Posted by Charlie on Tuesday, October 21, 2008, at 13:47 (@907). Filed under In Passing. Follow […]
Oh yeah, and now our little closer-to-God-dicentra has spoken. The greatest weakness of the bullhorn conservative movement is at its “root” there’s nothing more than philosophical proclamations of self-definition. “I’m smart because I’m conservative, don’t you agree! Well, then, that’s because you’re stuuuuupid!” That’s about it, maturation stunted flag-wavers with God-complexes searching for a group of like-minded backscratchers.
How many words have they wasted trying to foist blame for all life’s inequities on those lessor souls who don’t wholesale buy into a finger pointing platitudes from self-anointed God-proclaimers?
Facts? Facts are for mortals! Meaningless to God! No use! Glory be thy self-proclamation!
Libertarianism as an actual governing (or not!) philosophy is a non-starter.
That being said, libertarian concepts are extremely valuable in the analysis of Government, how it works, and what policies should be made. The fact that things don’t really work that simply doesn’t keep the fundamentals from being true, however overlaid they may be with real-world considerations. In the same way, however learned a treatise may be, it is defective if the subjects and verbs don’t agree in number.
Randite Objectivism isn’t libertarian; it is a very thinly warmed-over version of the Philosopher-King concept, with a method for the elite to validly emerge from the general populace (other than self-election, which never works) grafted on. It, too, suffers badly from oversimplification.
Regards,
Ric
I agree with that. As a novel, it does indeed suck
Balls, thor. Once again you have mistaken your mirror for a window, and are madly pecking away at the opponent you see.
A madly enthusiastic obsession with assignment of blame is entirely Progressive. A conservative says, “from experience and observation, this works and this does not.” Fault is not part of the analysis. Mechanisms are part of the analysis, but that isn’t at all the same thing. If the machine doesn’t work because a part is defective, the bad piece isn’t evil or malicious; it has simply failed, and needs to be repaired or replaced. Anthropomorphosizing the impersonal is a stupid, and typically “liberal” (in the modern sense) mistake.
Regards,
Ric
Atlas is so shitty it can’t be mocked.
The thing Rand can do for “teenage” types (who aren’t prone to identification-through-fantasy) is prime them to be attitudinally philosophical but resistant to Philosophy, the institution. “The dead are all liars” is a good place to start. Rand didn’t go the right way from there, or even know what she was talking about, really, but it’s possible to learn from a failure. Possible.
Mostly she makes nerds into assholes.
This is a similar thing.
See, I was just going to say re. thor: “That’s a world class case of projection, there.”
Ric, if you weren’t such a joy to read, I’d be humbled. Actually, I’m humbled anyway, I’m just too amused to care.
(1) What the hell is “thor” talking about?
(2) Is the discussion of Weisberg’s boobishness and State-humping now going to be a discussion of Rand, you have to defend Rand to show what a nincompoop Wesiberg is? Oh, well. I’m not a Randroid, but you don’t have to agree with every jot and tittle of Rand’s oeuvre to agree with her ability to get the goods on the collectivists. Especially since the ones she depicted in her novels now seem almost attractive, when you look at what a zoo modern “liberalism” and the Left has become. Rand wrote in an era of JFK, Adlai Stevenson, and Hubert Humphrey: phiolsophiocally flawed men, but essentially decent and pro-American. Now we have the Obamessiah, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, George Soros, etc., the Wesley Mouches and Kip Chalmers of our time. This crew makes Rand’s most unflattering caricatures of “liberals” look kike John Galt in comparison, Besides, the two most important points Rand wrote about–that no one has an automatic claim on anyone else’s life, and that no one has the right to initiate force against you for whatever ostensibly “noble” reason–remain valid. When someone tells me they’re not, I immediate get a tighter grip on my wallet and either move rapidly in the direction of either the door or my shotgun.
(3) Why do people still think Whittaker Chamber’s silly review of ATLAS SHRUGGED is some kind of devastating demolition job? I’ve read the review several times–conservatives keep trotting out like it’s Holy Writ–and it’s clear Chambers was totally clueless when it came to the book or the philosophy. It’s from the School of Straw Man Criticism. I gather he didn’t like the book because it wasn’t Christian, or something, but I don’t recall him ever actually refuting any of the ideas in the book.
(4) I find most people who disparage her fiction do so in direct proportion to their disagreement with her ideas. This makes sense because one of her ideas was a Roamantic Realism, and what Leslie Fiedler called “the High Priesthood of Literature” disparage Romanticism in fiction, asthe academy dislikes Romanticism in the arts in general. (Unless the arists are safely dead.)
Now can we get back to discussing what a doofus Weisberg is?
Without Rand, there is no BioShock. That alone makes it a valuable literary contribution. I dare you to say otherwise.
Our collegiate anti-corollary to “The dead are all liars” was “We’re not free, [to do with their meaning as we wish] ’cause they’re all dead”.
Sorry for the spelling errors in my previous post, especially “kike” or “like.”
I just got around to reading Atlas Shrugged this year, and I liked it. It wasn’t a case of good writing that won me over, it was the message that nothing is free.
Also BioShock was a great game.
I liked Atlas because reading about running a railroad was pretty bracing stuff.
And thor, honey, I can safely say that I’m closer to God than you are without affecting any pretense or self-righteousness. You’ve demonstrated over and over again a willingness to exhibit all flavors of vile behavior on this blog; and despite what intellect you think you have, intellect without a scrap of virtue is a waste of gray matter.
Which is why I will continue to summarily delete your comments from my posts over at the pub.
And yeah, I always cry for at least two hours when someone disagrees with me. Doesn’t that inspire pity from you? Are you really the kind of guy who likes to make the girls cry?
Oh, and ST: I don’t give a tinker’s dam what other people say about Rand. Don’t care about their “conservative credentials,” don’t care how many scholarly credits they’ve got to their name or if their vocabulary or intellect dwarfs mine.
I can make my own mind up about what’s what. Can you?
You mean conservatives should just abandon the principles of conservatism in favor of progressiveness like Chris Buckley did? The GOP is failing in terms of conservative principles, so go over to the side that isn’t trying at all, or worse, is actively trying to destroy those principles. How does that work exactly?
No offense intended, but this anti-intellectualism crap is getting old
ST: “Intellectual” and “Marxist” aren’t synonyms.
Really.
ST —
Anti-intellectualism is coming these days almost exclusively from the left. Snobbish elitism is not the same as intellectualism — particularly when it acts as a barrier to debate based on things other than the merit of an argument (like, for instance, moose hunting or the wrong shoes). Academics like SBP, dicentra, myself, and others here know what institutionalized anti-intellectualism looks like, having enjoyed it first hand.
It’s a fact. Come to grips with it, is my advice to you. Or else cluck as silently as possible so as not to disturb the adults.
this anti-intellectualism crap is getting old
Who’s anti-intellectualism? Being intellectually rigorous is a marvelous thing. [Insert “you should try it some time” joke here.]
But I discovered long ago that having cerebral chops means only that you have cerebral chops.
It doesn’t mean that you are:
wise
virtuous
insightful
immune to peer pressure (quite the opposite, in fact)
The Smart Kids are mortally terrified of being thought foolish by their peers. You can tell by the way they resort to “everybody who knows anything thinks so” arguments.
They like to tell themselves that their lock-step thinking is a sign that they’re right, because how could so many Smart People be so wrong? No tautology there.
The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes only demonstrates that Smart People have always fallen prey to their fear of being thought foolish.
What Jeff said.
The principles of conservatism have already been abandoned,
By both you and the beltway GoP; hardly an argument to jump on THAT bandwagon. And speaking of which, you just made the first of several “everybody who knows anything thinks so†arguments in your comment.
Bush’s ratings are at an historical low for a reason.
Two.
The booting of Republicans from Congress started in 2006 and will continue in this cycle.
Three.
Some of the people who defend the crap that the GOP is currently trying to sell need to go back and read what Reagan was actually saying about the optimal role of government.
And this one has me perfectly baffled: not a bandwagon argument, but worse; you’ve just asserted what you’ve tried to refute.
Conservatives have been tearing their hair out for years because of the non-conservative behavior of the current GoP. They lost in 2006 because we showed them the door.
Dude. You sound smart, but it doesn’t take me long to tear down your arguments. That’s not good. I throw like a girl and everything.
Bush’s ratings are low because (a) he couldn’t stop the Dems from screwing the economy (and he tried!) and (b) in an effort to be truly bi-partisan he’s abandoned certain conservative principles and signed on to things like prescription drug benefits, no child left behind, etc. He did, however, get the big stuff right – the War on Terror – and a truly objective history will be kind, I think.
I’ve read arguments that he made these concessions to buy support for the war; if so, I’ll have to forgive him that devil’s bargain, but coming from the guy who talked so much about “compassionate conservatism” during the 2000 primaries I’m not so sure it wasn’t really his idea all along. I do know he sucked up to that douchenozzle Ted Kennedy, and got exactly no credit for it. He’s spent billions on AIDS in Africa, and we have to hear about it from Bob Geldof.
In other words, his approval ratings are low because people can be stupid.
But, you know, that’s just my opinion.
And of course I’m obligated to point out that Pelosi’s congress rates even LOWER than the President, yet Dems are expected to pick up even more seats. Apparently ratings, like polls, aren’t “all that.” Unless they support your own conclusions, a’course.
One of Bush’s first acts, if you think back scooter-nl, was to slap a tariff on steel imports to “pay off” steelworkers in WV that voted for him in 2000, or so it was reported. In any case, that tariff told us quite a bit about what we were getting that we hadn’t understood before.
A political pragmatist? A buyer of votes at least consistent enough to pay off when he could cheat the voters?
Not a man of towering principle, that is certain, at least.
No, it’s not a fact, factually speaking.
Without hesitation I point the bony finger of blame directly at the two cohorts you mentioned as two who’ve authored some of the most anti-intellectual rhetoric and downright childish spew onto and into PW’s Pub section. These two are spectacularly infantile in thought and in their reaction to dissent. When describing Obama you once said, if I may paraphrase, “it’s not Obama, it’s who he hangs around that worries me.” Let me tag you, Jeff, with that line as well. Trot that banal suburban kid, Karl, back in here before passing the slightest consideration of granting these aforementioned two the ability to grace your fine site’s front page.
There are cases of text-induced reader self-mutilation in the medical books, if you needed reminding of the seriousness of which I speak. I myself, admittedly, upon skimming SPB’s and dicentra’s threads, have been sent into a state of wonder of what I ate for breakfast, and/or have drifted into humming some hated pop song that won’t leave me head, and, far worse, have caught myself descending into contemplation of where, exactly, one actually would find enough fresh hemlock for a lethal dosage.
The cause and effects associated with the vernacular of the ignorant is not a toy water pistol, my friend. And these two are as dangerous as any numbingly dull assumption-trotters that have ever blurred my vision. I’d sit through a three-day convention for timeshare salesmen before paying a penny for their thoughts. At least timeshare salesman actually recognize they’re liars and hold no false impressions that the public wouldn’t, if given a choice, willfully bath in a sinkhole of dark, boiling dog piss rather than confront their bitter little verses.
two who’ve authored some of the most anti-intellectual rhetoric and downright childish spew onto and into PW’s Pub section.
Put on your big-boy pants and do a fisking on my stuff, then. And I want the Latin names for the logical fallacies.
And even if you destroy every single word I’ve written since I was 3, what’s that to me? I never held myself out as an intellectual’s intellectual, nor do I fancy myself some kind of philosophical genius.
I don’t overvalue cerebral chops, remember?
I’m over here and at the pub writing what I write because I enjoy it. It amuses me. Can you say the same?
Because, if what you say is true, “I myself, admittedly, upon skimming SPB’s and dicentra’s threads, have been sent into a state of wonder of what I ate for breakfast, and/or have drifted into humming some hated pop song that won’t leave me head, and, far worse, have caught myself descending into contemplation of where, exactly, one actually would find enough fresh hemlock for a lethal dosage,” then I have to wonder what in Sam Hill motivates you to STAY.
And given the tenor of your comments, it’s not enjoyment. What a sad life you must lead, torturing yourself by having to read my stuff over at that well-trafficked, unavoidable site, the PW Pub.
I mean, the fact that people read my stuff over the loudspeakers at Ambercrombie & Fitch is bad enough, but then you hop onto the ‘tubes to get some more?
Dayum, thor. I never thought I’d grow up to be the object of a masochist’s obsession.
Please. thor spent all his days calling Karl a racist because he wrote shit that thor didn’t agree with. Are we supposed to believe now that he is some sort of towering intellect because he has managed to use bigger words than racist. Nope, he’s an asshole with a big vocabulary. Nothing more, nothing less.
dicentra, I take it thorboi is back (I’ve got him back in the troll bin at the moment, so I won’t see anything he writes).
Funny how thor just can’t seem to quit us. I mean, there are lots of stupid people on the Internet, but we’re the people on whose every word thorboi hangs.
It’s almost like the boi is addicted to abuse and public humiliation.
How could that have happened, I wonder?
I’ve got him back in the troll bin at the moment, so I won’t see anything he writes
Took him back out for a bit.
Bah.
Freshman-with-a-thesaurus stuff.
Back in he goes.
The cause and effects associated with the vernacular of the ignorant is not a toy water pistol, my friend.
I don’t think you need be all that frightened by the threat of anti-intellectualism, thor.
Dave, dicentra has declared that anyone who believes in God won’t be voting for Obama. While she sock-puppets God, SPB cock-puppets with a box of trolls.
They never fail to reaffirm my sanity anew.
Peace out.
Godservitudius pigmenteria maximus provincialis ubiquita.
[…] line of the week From Jeff Goldstein Weisberg’s understanding of libertarianism seems to track directly with his understanding of most […]
datathor, lol.
lolduhBmoduh
“Lovesoftfun at Funnegans weak” and “the impovernment of the booble by the babble for the bubble”
It’s cute when thor sticks up for his pet monkey. I wonder. Is dd on a leash?
Cuter still whenever I knock the bitch out of petty wingered bitches.
Um, but you never do. Never. Only in the fever swamp that is your mind. Again, you’re well read, but a fucking emotional mess.